Carrol Cox wrote:
>For those who have never encountered a modest proposal before, a taste
>(!) of the original.
>Carrol
>
>A Modest Proposal
>
>For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
>>From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
>For Making Them Beneficial to The Public
>
>By Jonathan Swift (1729)
>
>
>The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million
>and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand
>couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty
>thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I
>apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the
>kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and
>seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those
>women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within
>the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of
>poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number
>shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under
>the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the
>methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft
>or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor
>cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing,
>till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly
>parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during
>which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as
>probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the
>county of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two
>instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so
>renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.
>
>I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years
>old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they
>will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at
>most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents
>or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four
>times that value.
>
>
>
--
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901